Learning to See India with Miki Desai

Ar. Prof. Miki Desai is one of India's most quietly influential architect-scholars — an architect, teacher, researcher and documenter who has spent more than five decades looking closely at the buildings, settlements, crafts and ways of life of the Indian subcontinent. For much of that time, he has travelled, photographed, measured and drawn architecture that was rarely being documented with the same patience and precision. His archive contains nearly 40,000 photographs and around 200 manually drafted measured drawings — an extraordinary record of India's vernacular, colonial and modern architecture. Miki taught at CEPT University, Ahmedabad, from 1981 until his retirement in 2014, and headed the Master's Program in Sustainable Architecture from 2011 to 2014. His research has been supported by the Senior Fulbright Fellowship, Getty Collaborative Grant, Graham Grant and Earthwatch Grant, among others. He has been a visiting studio critic at ETH Zurich, MIT and UC Berkeley, and his work has been exhibited and presented internationally. After more than fifty years of making measured drawings by hand, he still refuses to use an eraser. If a line is wrong, he doesn't correct it. He starts the drawing again. Madhavi Desai is an architect, researcher, writer, and teacher whose work has shaped the study of gender, domestic space, and the Indian city. She taught at CEPT University for over three decades, held fellowships from institutions including MIT’s Aga Khan Program and the Getty Foundation, and co-founded the Women Architects Forum and Feminist Collective in Architecture in India. She and Miki Desai have been intellectual partners for over four decades, co-authoring, researching, and documenting architecture together. Their practice, Archicrafts, has spent more than four decades documenting India’s vernacular, colonial, and modern architecture through research, archives, publications, exhibitions, and education. Archicrafts: https://archicrafts.com/ Books by Miki Desai: https://archicrafts.com/publications Images & Imprints: https://imagesandimprints.com Heritage Playing Cards: https://archicrafts.com/heritage-play... 📩 Email: mmdesai2@gmail.com Guest recommended by: Ar. Girish Dariyav Karnawat Ar. Gurjit Singh Matharoo Chapters: 0:00 Where It All Began 10:06 From Making to Manufacturing 27:25 Inside Teaching Basic Design in Architecture 33:33 Maker vs Manufacturer 48:13 "Nepal Made Me Look": The Turning Point at Age 23 1:16:47 1973: The Exhibition That Took Courage 1:26:13 "Those Who Stayed in India Are the Lucky Ones" 1:40:30 Old Ahmedabad City: The Architecture of Neighborhood 1:55:31 The Jamnagar Solarium: A Building "Allowed to Die Every Day" 1:59:21 Varanasi Measured Drawing Trip 2:37:07 Bijapur, Karnataka 2:39:09 South India Photographs 2:42:24 Miki's Kerala Temple Model and Drawings 2:48:49 Wooden Architecture of Kerala 3:52:26 Basadis of Moodbidri, Karnataka 4:04:14 Himachal Pradesh Archives 4:10:39 Day 2: Warmup 4:14:16 The Funnel of Civilization: Miki's Theory of Indian Wisdom 4:21:37 Nalanda: "The Bricks Are Talking" 4:28:39 Miki’s Black and White Photography Collection 4:37:46 Bazaar vs Supermarket 4:50:29 History of the Indian Film Industry 4:53:12 Design Sensibilities 5:05:53 Fatehpur Sikri Photographs 5:11:13 The Floppy Disks: Fifty Years of Undigitized Memory 5:13:33 Aihole, Pattadakal, Badami: Where Indian Architectural Thought Was Born 5:18:19 Hampi From the Top 5:24:09 Rani ki Vav and the Sites India Hasn't Finished Digging 5:25:51 "Popular Spatiality": An Aesthetic Nobody Has Named Yet 5:29:01 The Philosophy of a Photograph 5:51:31 Golden Circus, Ahmedabad 6:02:42 G. Aravindan and the Malayalam Cinema That Made Him Cry 6:08:14 What We're Losing, Right Now 6:15:04 Banaras's Water Tank: A Story About Politics, Not Bricks 6:21:52 Memories of Buildings 6:28:45 Indians Have Lost Sensitivity 6:47:04 Teachers, Madhavi & the Life That Was Built 7:08:55 What Is Architectural Research, Actually? 7:19:54 Art Deco in India: A Style Nobody Is Reviving 7:27:18 Miki and Madhavi’s Books 7:35:50 Miki’s Inspirations and Taste 7:41:45 The Bungalow: How a House for One Lonely Englishman Became India's Suburban Dream 7:46:12 Madhavi: "She Allowed Me to Grow" 7:47:03 Final Advice: Look, Record, Understand 7:51:11 Other Measured Drawings by Miki Desai Let’s Connect 📩 Email: q.head007@gmail.com Instagram:   / clintonbaptist   Twitter: https://x.com/clinton750